Microsoft leaks a screenshot of Windows Mobile... something
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 18th 2009 4:27PM
posted November 18th 2009 4:27PM
posted November 18th 2009 4:27PM
powered by gdgt
Microsoft Windows Phone 7
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Apparently you're not aware that Silverlight is actually a good piece of software...
Yea, but Silverlight has Microsoft in its name which means it has to be hated... *sigh*
Looks like WinMo is just hoping to stem the tide of their ever shrinking market share.
SharePoint and MS Office.....Cool do we get those big clunky "Ribons" on a Mobile Office? That way we can have a single character of the document displayed at a time.
It's obvious this is just a placeholder screenshot. Hopefully you (Engadget) are not this naive.
If I was being naive, I'd say that this Windows Mobile 7, since it's on an official MS page... but I'm not and I didn't.
Dude, your post suggests that this is a screenshot of WM7. If you were not implying this then why use words like..."leaks" or link to the old Windows Mobile 7 screenshots? You may not have explicitly said, "this is Windows Mobile 7" but you were all but implying it is.
I called it "Windows Mobile... something", which pretty much means I don't think this is WinMo 7. It's right there in the hed, you know?
Ok fine. At any rate, I appreciate your replies.
Is it Engaget as naive or MS being naive to think they can save their shrinking market share without a useful product?
Ummm... anybody notice that the link that says "until the end of next year" links to the engadget story that says it's due in the 1st quarter of 2010 (a.k.a. next year between January and the end of April)?
Alright, I don't get it. What exactly can you tell about the interface for Windows Mobile 7 from this? I get that it looks like it still has the bottom two soft buttons along with a center button of some kind but aside from that, everything in this is from that app, not from the OS itself. It doesn't even show it in motion so you can see how it works. The only other thing you can tell is what theme/color this person likes to use.
Why is Mark getting downranked? Do you guys really think you can find out much about any piece of software by just getting one picture of its UI?
Here is my issue. If, and it is a big if, this is a WM7 screen shot, it means they still have not really designed the OS to be touch centric and still are relying on a stylus. That alone makes this a non-starter, and we haven't even begun to find out if they actually designed as a mobile OS from the ground up instead of a shrunk-down desktop OS. Start menus and deep menu structure have no place on a phone.
@cashmonee: First, thanks for the sensible reply(I thought I was going to get flamed for saying that). For your comment, I'm not really sure where you're getting that feeling from. All the buttons I can see on this are about as big as similar buttons are on the iPhone/Android. The list structure looks very similar to both, except that it magnifies the one being highlighted(not sure what that means on a touchscreen, but without a video it's impossible to tell how that item got selected) and the buttons on the bottom are pretty much the right size for finger pressing. There's that top bar that's a bit on the small side, sure, but I don't even see any buttons there, it looks like it's just there to give status information.
It doesn't matter what this is any more. It's too little too late.
WinMo has been slaughtered at the hands of the iPhone and Blackberries and the Gartner group says WinMo has just less than a year of life. As is right now it's the only major mobile platform racing towards irrelevance. Ok maybe it will have company with Nokia's S60 but that's just because Nokia already has it's next platform Maemo. WinMo 7? Still too little too late.
Good bye Microsoft!
Just about everyone said the same thing about Motorola until the Droid came out. Also, just about everyone said that about Apple before the iMac.
@Mark yeah but the Droid isn't exactly 'killer', is it. It's just another phone with a lot of marketing behind it.
Sorry for being OT.
Ummm...
if you read the MS site you link to this is a screen shot from "SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010" which is a part of Windows Mobile Office 2010. Windows Mobile Office 2010 is designed to work on windows mobile 6.5.
Why would you expect the UI to be radically different on a windows Mobile 6.5 device?
this just looks so wrong... i don't knowwww i've got this feeling that the tiny close buttons will appear again and I'm seriously trying to find some love for winmo again but like this? it aint happen
ugly
looks like 16 bit Windows 3.1, 1991 ... Oh, I remember, Microsoft said they were going to bring the desktop to the mobile, sop its make perfectly sense. They must have missed that it is a new millenium 10 years ago :-)
What kind of garbage sentence is this? You're ripping on what is little more than a render, and yet you can't put together a well-constructed sentence or master the use of punctuation.
You think this looks like crap--yet I would imagine people making "crap" are about as smart as intellectually gifted as you are.
Off I go, writing my own mangled reply.
FML.
This was already leaked by Stephen:
http://msftkitchen.com/2009/11/windows-mobile-7-central-menu-experience-ui-windows-live-for-mobile-code-name-catalyst-and-more.html
Attention:
This is a mock-up. We've seen them before (over a year ago), including the 6.5 (and even 6.5.1) renders.
If necessary, I will provide links to the old 6.5 screens along with these, where they feature different size controls, different graphics, and different fonts.
Of curious note is that the application itself looks the same on 6.5, but the OS portion is different. My guess? They used the renders to make it look snazzy.
Why bother?
"Windows Mobile... Ugly"
No offense to the fan boys out there, but the mobile OS's out there are used in more than just phones for the twitter obsessed 20 somethings. And while the Iphone and 'droid OS are prettier than that particular MS screen shot, that's about all they offer from a product perspective that is superior They are designed specifically for phones running non-realtime apps. Win Mobile is the only "mainstream" mobile OS we have considered for our real-time embedded products, in line with grass-roots RT os's like VxWorks, ThreadX, etc. So scoff all you want at MS's phone market share, it isn't the only market, and it certainly isn't the most profitable one.
FAKE. Look at the bottom icon. it's overlapping.
is it me, or does that little bottom button look ALOT like the iPhone "home" button?
It's just you.
The only users left with WinMo phones at this point are those that have no other options at work.
And they gotta try so hard to keep defeinding it. But you just know as soon as their IT folks open up their network to other mobile OS, they'll be dumping WinMo like a shitty brick
Lets hope this is a joke no way the OS looks like that, because looks like pure shit
Thanks for the heads up jeremyshearer. Downloading it myself as well.
I think that anyone saying Microsoft is dead in the phone business is nieve. You're talking about a company who has so much money they could dominate any field they wanted with just a "spray and pray" strategy. They'll be back. The only thing stopping them from any market dominance is the threat of more anti-trust lawsuits. If they tied cloud stuff to their phone os like webos, or got all control happy like apple they'd get sued by the EU in a heart beat. They'll be back they just have to walk carefully or they'll get hit with anti-competitive practice suits. I have a G1 as one of my phones I'm in the market for an upgrade with my sprint phone, probably going Pixi. So I'm not just some winmo fanboy babbling.
I think that anyone saying Microsoft is dead in the phone business is nieve. You're talking about a company who has so much money they could dominate any field they wanted with just a "spray and pray" strategy. They'll be back. The only thing stopping them from any market dominance is the threat of more anti-trust lawsuits. If they tied cloud stuff to their phone os like webos, or got all control happy like apple they'd get sued by the EU in a heart beat. They'll be back they just have to walk carefully or they'll get hit with anti-competitive practice suits. I have a G1 as one of my phones I'm in the market for an upgrade with my sprint phone, probably going Pixi. So I'm not just some winmo fanboy babbling.
Sorry big boy but all you are saying is just wishful thinking. Microsoft blew it in mobile phones and WinMo7 is going to do zero to pull a come back. The market place and consumers have already moved on to bigger and better mobile platforms. The iPhone and Blackberries are not going to stop their massive growth momentum, WinMo fell behind 2years ago and they are too far to even dream to catch up to 2007 levels.
WinMo is for terms and purposes a dead platform.
By the way "spray and pray" is not a strategy, it's an act of severe desperation.
No reason to keep something so tightly under wraps unless it is going to be innovative and the subject of IP theft by others. I actually have confidence in them - though I highly doubt anything would sway me from BB or Android.. Android being the most plausible long term, because goog constantly releases updates! Eh HEM!
not a huge fan of the battery and signal on the bottom. looks like an old nokia
Half the zune team is working on the new UI, i'm sure the design is a whole lot better then this.
Still can't escape the two "softkeys" which are totally irrelevant for touch screen, and were a mess in the button era anyway. WinMo is dead.
Sigh
fugly typeface and weird lighting and colours. Don't like it at all. ew. barf.
Looks like windows. Fail.